


Then I Will Hold You

by Littlewhitemouse



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2716070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlewhitemouse/pseuds/Littlewhitemouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half a heart is not enough of a heart to untangle the romantic web Mytho has become tied up in, and no one is really helping him sort things out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Then I Will Hold You

**Author's Note:**

> Tiny oneshot written for a prompt when I was doing a writing challange month last May. There isn't explicit shipping per say, it's a short piece about Mytho trying to figure out what the heck his various suitors are doing when he only has half his emotions, more or less. there is no favored ship in my heart and I'm considering writing more on this theme because... polyamory, and feelings. 
> 
> Fair warning I may not know much about ballet at all.

Rue was pulling on Mytho’s hands. She stepped backwards, on her toes, tugging his body up from the chair, until he was standing on his feet in front of her.

“Help me dance, prince,” she asked, smiling so softly.

“What do I have to do?” he asked her.

Rue bowed to him, inclining her legs, tilting her head. Mytho bowed back. “I want to dance the pas de deux,” she said. “Don’t you know how?”

“I hold you,” he said.

Rue smiled and squeezed his hands. “Gently,” she said, slipping one arm up and around his head for a moment, brushing his hair, “but tightly.” Rue stood on her toes, raising up like a crane in the water, looking down into the river for a fish. Mytho’s arms were left extended towards her, because she did not move them.

She stood on one leg, placed one of his arms around her waist, and another above her head, which she clasped. “When I spin,” she said, “hold me here. When I leap, move to catch me. Where I move, help me go. Support me where I look like I may be weak, lift me if I am in the air, hold me if I fall down low.”

“So my job is to protect you?”

Rue’s smile fell for a minute, but then it grew again. She spun around once on her toe, and Mytho kept his hands around her waist, like she said. “That’s how the pas de deux works, yes,” she whispered. “The purpose of the dance is to show off the skill of the woman and the strength of the man. A woman could make do by herself… you just have to stay by me. Do you understand?” She held out her hand for his.

He took it. Rue fondly rustled his hair, and said, “Now, pay attention to me, prince. Watch me,” and, like a pendulum swinging, she began to dance, turning herself in quiet circles around him, testing him, though not obviously, by tilting very close to the ground whenever she meant for him to catch her.

He was able to.

He was reminded, just faintly, as if seeing a grainy film, of a dark bird in the sky, circling around, tightening its rotations, ever closer, and she would grin and sigh and brush the hair from his eyes or touch his shoulder as she spun around him.

At one point, when she gripped him and turned him with her, making the room spin, he saw that Fakir had come to stand by the door, and was watching them. He looked angry. His arms were crossed, and his mouth was tight.

But since Rue had asked him to only pay attention to her, he didn’t linger on Fakir long. He saw him, for only a second, every time Rue spun him around, before she turned his chin with a light finger, directing him back to her. Fakir never moved from the doorframe, still as a statue, guarding them.

Mytho suddenly wondered if Fakir was also holding them up, like he was holding up Rue. But why?

Could they be about to fall?

-

“Dance with me,” she said, smiling in her eyes, “my prince.”

Mytho held out his hand to grasp Tutu’s almost before she put it out. He was still unsteady on his feet, but she straightened him up, using her arms to lift him almost on to his toes, like she was: holding their hands above their heads like a gate.

 “If you don’t have the strength to stand,” she said, voice serene, “then I will hold you,” and Mytho felt his feet leaving the ground, and an arm around his back, as he was being spun, and lifted into the air— the ground far beneath him, the sky filling up his eyes. When one foot reached the ground again, he realized: he was dancing the female half of the pas de deux.

It was easy. It was effortless, even. Tutu’s hands would just barely touch his waist to guide him, her strength moved to just tap him here or there, always prepared to pick him up where she had pushed him. She stood as immovably as a pillar, feet straight, one before the other, balanced as impeccably as a crane on its thin feet.

A crane, where had he seen that before?

Mytho even closed his eyes and imagined that day, so long ago now, when Tutu had caught him where he fell out of the window.

He might have died otherwise.

Had he meant to die?

He was questioning his own actions in a way he never had before. He did not know what he had meant to do on that day. He did not know why he started falling out of the window. He did not understand why he had done what he had done, and more and more, he did not understand his own mind.

Those dark nights were forgotten in the daylight, as the Princess easily lifted him into the air, and carried him down again.

Something flickered in his head, like a candle flame lighting. “Could it be,” said Mytho, absently, sinking into her arms, “that you’re trying to hold me up?”

Princess Tutu held him out and placed him back onto his feet. “I will always hold you up if you need it,” she said.

“Then… am I falling?”

Tutu’s head tilted a bit to the side. He hadn’t become good at recognizing other people’s expressions yet, but maybe she was confused, and maybe she was sad. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Things may look bad now, because you’re uncertain. But I’m sure things are really getting better. I’ll always be working to help you up, you know.”

Mytho clasped her hand in both of his. His eyes were shut. All he was doing was feeling his own feeling—so rare, so warm, so new. He didn’t have any words for it, nothing to compare it to, and he just wanted to feel it, and keep it in his heart as long as possible.

He had so idealized getting back his feelings. He hadn’t realized they would come and go so much.

Something alarmed Princess Tutu, suddenly. He wasn’t sure what. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must go.”

“But—“

“I’ll try to see you soon,” she whispered. “Look out the window tonight, and if everything goes well, I will be there.”

She left as quickly as a songbird alighting from the branches of a tree.

Mytho’s hands, let go, ended out cupped as if to hold something, right in front of his heart.

There was a sound of shuffling feet behind him, and he turned around to find that it was Fakir who had startled Princess Tutu by sneaking up behind him. Fakir was standing very still, with his arms crossed, and his mouth very tight, with his sword tied to his waist.

Scared.

It wasn’t angry.

That was how Fakir looked. He looked scared.


End file.
